MIDL Insight Meditation: How to Use Labels in Meditation 

Hi Peter, You can use touch instead of breathing if your intention is to cultivate momentary concentration for insight (satipatthana vipassana). The way this works is that you use a point of touch or the experience of your body sitting as a grounding point from which to observe habitual movements of your attention away from it. In this case you take interest in habitual shifts of attention. If however your intention is to cultivate unification of your attention for tranquility / jhana (samatha bhavana) then touch is not a suitable meditation object. In this case you need a meditation object that will change and become more subtle as a reflection of your state of mind. Since breathing reflects the mind it is a good meditation object for this. touch will not develop in this way. Breathing will also develop into a conceptual object as a sign of concentration (nimitta), touch will not develop in this way.

In regards to "Every time i concentrate on breathing (rising and falling) i get tense " this is usually experienced because you are 'trying' to focus on the rising and falling movement. Do not 'try', instead your intention should be towards cultivating the clarity and alignment of the awareness of the breath rather then on focusing on the breath. The breathing is there to polish awareness not the other way around. It is helpful to view the breath as movement within your whole body, being aware of it from a distance. If there is still a tendency towards effort and strain, open your awareness to your senses, holding it wide, and experience the rising and falling movement as a small experience within this peripheral awareness. Concentration will arise not by focusing in but by aligning with present experience.

@@midlinsightmeditation Very nicely explained! Thank you, I really learned a lot from your lessons. I am curious, what is your opinion about zazen (just sitting) meditation? What is its purpose and what does it cultivate? Sometimes when I’m too tense I notice that just sitting is much more suitable for me than focusing on something.

@@peterwolf6356 Hi Peter, I do not know enough about zazen to comment. In MIDL there is a meditation technique called stillness in which you sit in meditation and expand your awareness out to experience all your senses. You then observe and relax any engagement of your attention with any experience that arises within the field of that awareness. This is an abandonment practice designed to disentangle awareness from sense experience. It is used in conjunction with attention training.. It is a skill that disperses energy within the overstimulated mind and relaxes the tension that builds from over effort as you have mentioned above. The key is to learn how to change the focus of your awareness from narrow, to middle on the body to wide and back again as a way of balancing energy. Also it is important to learn the skill of holding multiple focusses of awareness at once. I call this layering.

Hi Born, The meditation path is based on relationship, it is your relationship towards what is being experienced that is of primary importance. First, it is important to understand that labels are just a way of clarifying where your attention is sitting, and what you are experiencing now. In this way they should not be used continuously in MIDL, but rather used just to direct and clarify attention. Labels are simply training wheels on your bicycle, designed to apply your attention towards an experience. They help develop continuity of mindfulness "What am I doing / experiencing now?", and they help to develop concentration "Where is the centre of my attention sitting now?". If you already know the answer to these two questions, then you do not need to use a label. You said: "...For example, I’m meditation and my attention is grounded in the breath “in”, “out”, “in”, out” and so on. Then I hear a sudden/unexpected and every short sound, almost instantly I’m getting irritated and hot insight my body, than I’m getting different thoughts about the whole drama show like “what the hell… now I’m getting hot insight, probably I will start to sweat… what should I label now… I don’t know, I have to ask Steven…”...." It is always about relationship, a stripping back of relationship until nothing is left. Your mind in this case, is reacting out of fear; the fear of not being in control. "I am meant to be meditating on the breath" Are you, really? Is this really what you are 'meant' to do? There is a discontinuity here between what you think should be happening, and what is actually happening. It is this misalignment of expectation that causes dukkha- friction/suffering. Your mind is habitually clinging to the idea that you are meant to be with the breath, and resisting anything else that interferes with it. This is the path of the insight meditator, you meditate not to avoid these tendencies towards resistance, but to bring them to the surface so that you can develop insight, and decondition them from your mind. So that they never arise again. This takes resilience, sensitivity, gentleness, and the ability to soften resistance. You asked: "...So again: What shout I label in this example? The initial distraction (sound), the reaction to it (irritated) or the physical experience (hot) or the thinking (thought)?..." Irritation. But only using the label to draw your attention to the relationship: 'irritated', this is all. Then be curious in regards to experience of irritation: 'hot, tight', 'unpleasant'. Deeply feel the unpleasantness (vedana), relax into it, then use your MIDL skill in softening, to soften into, relax into, your relationship of resistance towards the unpleasantness of the irritation. If this is difficult, then you need to refine your meditative skill in abandoning, but practicing MIDL meditations 1-3. midlmeditation.com/midl-training-1-6-1

@@midlinsightmeditation Thank you very much Stephen, that was very helpful!